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There's a reason for all that spam you've been seeing pitching penny stocks. It's so the spammer can make money on the price rise after the spamming campaign. It's called "pump and dump" but some spammers get even slimier.

Consider what Aleksey Kamardin and his accomplices did: They hacked into the trading accounts of innocent parties, selling their holdings and using the proceeds to buy shares in Thomas Equipment, a firm whose stock in one day soared from 26 cents to 80 cents a share.

Karmadin and his gang did the same thing 13 other times. According to the SEC at least 27 accounts and 14 companies at brokers E-Trade Securities, Scottrade, TD Ameritrade, J.P. Morgan Chase and Charles Schwab were involved.

Even Thomas Equipment was a victim in this scam, as they were uninvolved in it and now their stock is even more worthless than before, stuck at 13 cents a share with trade restrictions by some brokers.

No details were provided, but in all likelihood the victims' systems had been compromised with keyloggers to capture their entry of usernames and passwords.

Jargon Watch:

A keylogger is a program (sometimes a physical hardware device) that intercepts and logs all keystrokes entered on the system.